Mary Kennedy’s family hit out at accusations in Robert Kennedy Jr affidavit

The family of suicide victim Mary Richardson Kennedy have hit out at her husband Robert F. Kennedy Jr and his accusations about her behaviour.

The family are angry about Kennedy Jr.’s claims about his wife’s behavior before her suicide which they say amounted to ‘a brutal psychological weapon’.

Relatives of Mary Richardson Kennedy have issued a statement saying an affidavit in the Kennedys’ divorce case, disclosed on Sunday, was ‘scurrilous’ and ‘full of vindictive lies’.

The affidavit, dated September 2011, contains accusations from Robert Kennedy that Mary Kennedy abused his children from an earlier marriage and stole from them and him.

The affidavit asked a judge for an order of protection to ‘keep her from physically attacking him, showing up uninvited at his homes and denigrating him to their children’.

Kennedy, the son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, also asked the judge that his wife be required to remain sober in front of their children and not threaten suicide in their presence.

The divorce was pending when Mary Kennedy hanged herself last month at the family’s estate in Bedford.

A brother of Mary Kennedy tried to get custody of her body before she was buried near the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts.

In their statement, the Richardson family’s said the affidavit, posted online by The Daily Beast as part of a Newsweek magazine article, was vindictive.

The statement said: “It was written by Bobby Kennedy as part of a contentious custody battle and was nothing more than a brutal psychological weapon in the divorce case.

“The release of the document was proof of the emotional and psychological abuse that Mary endured during the last years of her life, and also in death.

“We hoped Mary could rest in peace.”

The Boston Herald, reporting the statement, said that messages left at Kennedy’s White Plains office at a legal environmental clinic and his divorce lawyer’s Manhattan office weren’t immediately returned.